Eight fellowship awards totalling $28,000 to be presented to West Virginia
artists

The West Virginia Commission on the Arts (WVCA) of the West Virginia Division
of Culture and History has awarded $28,000 to a group of Mountain State artists
who were selected as recipients of the 2005 West Virginia Artist Fellowship
Grant Awards. The fellowships will be presented at the Governor’s
Awards for the Arts gala at 7 p.m. on Monday, April 4, at the Cultural Center
in the State Capitol Complex.

At the ceremony, eight Artist Fellowship Awards of $3,500 will be made to
artists from Cabell, Harrison, Marion, Marshall, Monongalia and Randolph counties.
Works were chosen in the categories of biography/memoir, children’s literature,
design, interdisciplinary/performance art and sculpture.

Fellowship recipients are Nicholas Allan Fox-Gieg of Huntington, Andy Fraenkel
of Moundsville, Geoffrey Cameron Fuller of Morgantown, Laurie Gunderson of Elkins,
Alison Helm of Morgantown, Anna Egan Smucker of Bridgeport, R. Barry Snyder
of Fairmont and Matthew C. Wolfe of Huntington. Background information about
each recipient can be found at the end of this news release.

The fellowships are intended to support working artists for the purpose of
artistic development. Use of funds is up to the recipients’ discretion
including, but not limited to, creating new work, purchasing supplies and materials,
travel, research, and defraying expenses incurred in the presentation of work
or documentation.
The WVCA of the West Virginia Division of Culture and History directs state
policy and allocations for arts programs in West Virginia.

For more information about the Fellowship Awards, call Jeff Pierson, individual
artist services coordinator for the Division at (304) 558-0240, ext. 717, or
contact him by e-mail at jeff.a.pierson@wv.gov.
Information and application forms for all available arts grants are posted on
the Division’s website at www.wvculture.org/arts/.

For more information about the Governor’s Awards for the Arts, call
the Cultural Center at (304) 558-0162. Tickets for the program are $35 and are
available by calling Sam Ratliff at (304) 558-0220, ext. 124, or by e-mailing
tina.l.stinson@wv.gov.

The West Virginia Division of Culture and History, an agency of the West Virginia
Department of Education and the Arts, brings together the state’s past,
present and future through programs and services in the areas of archives and
history, the arts, historic preservation and museums. The Cultural Center is
West Virginia’s official showcase for the arts. Visit the Division’s
website at www.wvculture.org for more information about programs of the Division.
The Division of Culture and History is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action
Employer.

2005 Artist Fellowship Recipients

Nicholas Allan Fox-Gieg of Huntington is a video artist and
theatrical designer. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Carnegie Mellon
University and a master’s degree in art animation from the University
of California, Los Angeles. His short works have been shown at the Centre Pompidou
in Paris, at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, and on television in Canada,
Israel and the Netherlands. His theatrical video design has been featured in
the Festival d’Avignon production of “Boxed In” and in the
Broadway musical “Squonk.”

Andy Fraenkel of Moundsville is a writer and storyteller.
He has a bachelor’s degree in theater and film from Richmond College of
the City University of New York. From 1972-90 he did script writing, acting
and directing with regional theaters in Wisconsin, Illinois and New York. Fraenkel
has presented thousands of programs at K-12 schools, colleges, libraries and
museums. His writing is the re-telling of folktales for his own performances.
He has published his own “Stories to Grow By” series and “The
Fish Who Wouldn’t Stop Growing.” He served as the West Virginia
liaison to the National Storytelling Network. Fraenkel is the co-founder of
“A Voice We Bring” storytelling in hospitals and nursing homes.
He has published featured articles on storytelling in the 1996 National Storytelling
Directory, Fellowship In Prayer, Tale Trader, Enlightenments and New Renaissance.

Geoffrey Cameron Fuller of Morgantown is the lead editor for
Fitness Information Technology, and previously was editor and technical associate
at the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and Development Inc., both in Morgantown.
Fuller has received more than 10 awards in West Virginia Writers’ annual
statewide contests in the novels, essays, short stories and “sudden fiction”
categories. He has taught creative writing in Morgantown, Ripley and Charleston
since 1993, as well as online courses in “flash fiction” for CoffeeHouseforWriters.com
In addition, Fuller is a performer of spoken word, vocals and percussion, and
is an actor in community theater. His work has been published in literary journals
including Now and Then, ProCreation, Calliope, Janus and Agent Orange.

Laurie Gunderson of Elkins describes herself as a “utilitarian
folk artist.” Her formal art training was at the Milwaukee School of the
Arts and the Milwaukee Center for Photography. She is a lifelong learner and
her apprenticeships and attendance at workshops has included Surface Design
Southeast in Athens, Ga.; Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina; International
Shibori Symposium in Arimatsu, Japan; and the McColley Basketry School in Chloe.
She has received awards from the Columbus Winter Fair, Ohio; Smithsonian Craft
Show, Washington, D.C.; and Art on the Green, Franklin, Mich. She received a
West Virginia Artist Fellowship in 1993. Gunderson’s exhibition history
includes Tamarack; Davis & Elkins College; International Textile Exhibits
in Kyoto and Nagoya, Japan; Gayle Willson Gallery, Southampton, N.Y.; and the
American Craft Museum, N.Y.

Alison Helm of Morgantown is professor of art and coordinator
of the sculpture program at the College of Creative Arts, West Virginia University
(WVU). Helm completed a bachelor’s degree in sculpture/metalsmithing at
the Cleveland Institute of Art and a master’s degree in sculpture at Syracuse
University. She has received several awards, including grants from the National
Endowment for the Arts; the WVU Outstanding Research Award for Creative Activity;
purchase and “best of show” awards from Chattanooga State, Westinghouse
Collection, Three Rivers Arts Festival; and the Governor’s Award in the
West Virginia Juried Exhibition. She has had a number of commissions and several
solo exhibitions.

Anna Egan Smucker of Bridgeport is a professional writer and
author. She is the author or co-author of sections of more than 30 teachers’
editions, workbooks and student texts in reading and social studies for the
Macmillan/McGraw-Hill School Division. Smucker has made presentations as a writing
workshop leader to more than 17,000 students and adults throughout the United
States. She has been the featured speaker for the West Virginia Governor’s
Art Institutes; the West Virginia, Ohio and Texas state reading councils; the
Appalachian Writers Conference; and the Santa Fe Reading Symposium. Her awards
include American Library Association Notable Book, International Reading Association
Children’s Book Award, West Virginia Library Association Literary Merit
Award and Notable Children’s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies.
Her published works include “No Star Nights,” “A History of
West Virginia” and the forthcoming “To Keep the South Manitou Light.”

R. Barry Snyder of Fairmont is professor of art at Fairmont
State College. His master’s degree in sculpture and ceramics is from the
University of Mississippi. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in painting
from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. He has had numerous solo exhibitions,
commissions and awards in juried exhibitions from Three Rivers Arts Festival;
International Gallery of Art, Memphis, Tenn.; Appalachian Corridors; Atlanta
Arts Festival; and Louisville National Art Exhibit, among others.

Matthew C. Wolfe of Huntington has been a full-time college
teacher at Ohio University, Marshall University and West Virginia University.
He has a bachelor’s degree in music performance and a master’s degree
in music history from Marshall University, and a doctorate in medieval literature
and books from West Virginia University. His published work includes selected
poems in “Wild Sweet Notes, Vol. 2”; a mystical short story, “7:58,”
in Fantastical Visions; and “Placing Chaucer’s Retraction for a
Reception of Closure” in The Chaucer Review. He was a member of the organizing
committee for the First Ohio River Festival of Books and a participant in the
summer institute “A View from Noah’s Ark: New Windows on the Medieval
World” at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga.